Bruce Johnson, Ph.D.

  • Senior Research Director, Computational Sciences, Structural Biology Initiative

Bruce Johnson, Ph.D. is the Senior Research Director of Computational Sciences in the ASRC’s Structural Biology Initiative. He joined the ASRC in January 2015.

Johnson is an international leader in the development of scientific software. His research is at the interface of experiment and computation and involves developing software and algorithms for the analysis and visualization of scientific data, with a particular emphasis on data from Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) Spectroscopy. He is the creator of NMRViewJ, one of the leading programs for the processing, analysis and visualization of NMR data from proteins and nucleic acids. He has additionally developed programs for small molecule NMR analysis and for the statistical analysis of collections of NMR spectra used in metabolomics research. Recently he has been involved in the application of data mining algorithms to the prediction of NMR spectra of RNA molecules. As a principal investigator in the Center for HIV RNA Studies (CRNA), he is involved in developing new software tools to be applied to elucidating the structure and function of RNA from the HIV virus.

Johnson received his Ph.D. in Zoology from Duke University in 1984 and was a postdoctoral researcher in Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry at Yale University. He then moved to Merck & Co., Inc. where he specialized in the use of macromolecular NMR spectroscopy and computational methods for drug discovery. Subsequently he founded a small scientific software company, One Moon Scientific, Inc., and became a Research Professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.

About the Johnson Lab

The Johnson Lab works at the interface of computation and experiment in developing new techniques for the analysis and use of NMR data from proteins, RNA and metabolomics studies.

Research Interests

Computational analysis of scientific data, especially of NMR data for structural biology and metabolomics; structural biology of HIV RNA.

Publications

M.A. Beckwith, T. Erazo-Colon, B.A. Johnson. RING NMR dynamics: software for analysis of multiple NMR relaxation experimentsJ Biomol NMR, 2020. DOI: 10.1007/s10858-020-00350-w

J. Marchant, M.F. Summers and B.A. Johnson. Assigning NMR spectra of RNA, peptides and small organic molecules using molecular network visualization software. J Biomol NMR, 2019, 73525–529. DOI:10.1007/s10858-019-00271-3

B. Johnson. From Raw Data to Protein Backbone: Chemical Shifts Using NMRFx Processing and NMRViewJ Analysis. Methods in Molecular Biology, 2018. DOI: 10.1007/978-1-4939-7386-6_13

M. Norris, B. Fetler, J. Marchant, B.A. Johnson. NMRFx Processor: a cross-platform NMR data processing program. J Biomol NMR, 2016. DOI:10.1007/s10858-016-0049-6

S.C. Keane, X. Heng, K. Lu, S. Kharytonchyk, V. Ramakrishnan, G. Carter, S. Barton, A. Hosic, A. Florwick, J. Santos, N.C. Bolden, S. McCowin, D.A. Case, B.A. Johnson, M. Salemi, A.Telesnitsky, M.F. Summers. Structure of the HIV-1 RNA packaging signalScience, 2015, 348:917-921.

headshot: bruce johnson

Phone Number

212.413.3227